Zippy Stat at MinneDemo
by K2 on February 8, 2009
I presented Zippy Stat at MinneDemo on Friday night and wanted to share a little about the experience.
Zippy Stat is a project I’ve been working on to record, monitor and share “Micro-Statistics” in your life. Things such as miles you’ve run, business cards collected at an event, business auto mileage and really anything else you can think up. It came about because there were a bunch of these little stats that I wanted to record for :coderow and didn’t want 30 different spreadsheets or 30 different apps to manage them. Furthermore, as a rabid developer, I’m always looking for another fun application to build.
MinneDemo is a technology networking event where 10 local developers/companies present what they’re working on to a theater full of developers, attorneys, VCs, and other tech trolls. Each presentation is seven minutes long and must be working software - No PowerPoint and typically light on the marketing fluff. The event was held at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. The theater holds 150, but I’m guessing there were 250 people there. Many people watched/mingled from the lobby where there was a live projection of the event while quite a few people left early because it was too crowded. The setup at Intermedia is great for the appropriate size. However, the organizers may need to look for a bigger venue or figure out ways to reduce the crowd, possibly through more frequent events. Either way, hats off to them for supporting Intermedia Arts in tough economic times.
Overall I was very happy with the event. My demo went off without any technical problems. Luke Francl, one of the organizers, suggested recording demos beforehand to cut down on last minute technical issues. I took his advice and did a screen recording the site earlier in the day using iShowU. This turned out well as a couple of the other presenters were concerned with the speed of the wi-fi and other last minute issues. It was also useful keeping the demo to the required seven minutes.
I had some great conversations with other presenters and attendees both before and after the presentation. Zippy Stat seemed to be positively received judging from conversations and online comments. I have done many public software demos, but this was the first time that it was really covered via Twitterers and bloggers. Their immediate and unfiltered feedback was also a fun and useful experience.
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